Caitlin, thanks for the good work. Glad I found your stuff a couple of months ago. I’m still trying to find my way around Steemit. I understand blockchain like a giraffe understands a refrigerator. But here I am. Someday maybe I’ll figure it out. Here is a brief musing on Syria. May they be shown mercy.

Since the beginning of the Syrian conflict I’ve seen a number of explanations as to why the United States, while not directly declaring war, supported the Syrian rebels in their bid to oust Assad. The first was the simple minded one that Assad is a bad guy (undefined) and, like Saddam, he must go. The second was an even more nebulous one - somehow Syria had gotten on a list created by neocon types back in the nineties. And it took the US until the 2010's to begin messing with them after Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria had their turn in the barrel. Then there was the more specific cause regarding oil pipeline rights with Assad supposedly denying the US the ability to run a strategic pipeline through Syria. Instead he favored a Russian one. And last, but not least, there is the old general purpose cause of Israel fomenting mayhem in its neighboring countries, for the simple purpose of weakening them through destabilization, in order to reduce their ability to threaten Israel.

So which is it to be? One, some, all of the above? The grim fact is that the status quo in Syria doesn’t seem like a satisfactory answer to any of the causes, except perhaps the last. But this may just be serendipity for Israel (I’m not advocating this, just trying to keep my balance). As things stand, the answer to the question, who won?, is not at all clear. And whether the US stays or pulls out, it makes little difference to the lack of resolution of the question. Syria is a broken nation, and will be so for a long time.

So perhaps this was the goal and it has been achieved. Perhaps you could even say that Syria drew the short straw and got its name on the naughty list. And its proximity to lots of oil was the clincher. The US, as currently configured politically and militarily, needs war like a crackhead needs crack. If it wasn’t Syria, it would be some other benighted hellhole. The US, and by this I mean its governing classes, cannot imagine itself not being at war. War is a bionic appendage, like Robocop has. It has had it so long it is part of its body image. It would get phantom pain if it was removed.

Certainly, globalist forces, Israel, banks, the MIC, the security state all connect into this pathology. But at the center of it all the US self-identifies as Mars, the god of war. It knows no other way. And please don’t hear what I’m not saying. I’m not saying that the US is not culpable, that it has no agency. Absolutely not. Neither is it futile to try to influence affairs in Syria by means of journalism or political protest. These are absolutely necessary and laudable.

We must face the fact that the US has the war disease, and it is in denial about it. And there is no obvious cure or way to put it in remission. Yet that is what must happen. While we do our best to remedy some of the symptoms, like Syria, we must also diligently try to find out a way to uproot and destroy this belligerent malady. Healing must come from within, while not forgetting the outward manifestations. I have no answer for this. But there is a small hope. Who could have imagined a year ago that Hollywood would have been brought to its knees by the exposure of its system of sexual exploitation? And it happened in an instant. Surely there is hope that someone or some event could hold up a mirror to the US and finally it could see its ravaged, war-pox ridden face, and realize just how diseased it is. Such things can happen.